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Tuesday, April 5, 2011

Today in Slate: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's Military Trial; Plus, Anti-Bullying Videos That May Promote Suicide

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Today: April 5, 2011

Cowardly, Stupid, and Tragically Wrong

Cowardly, Stupid, and Tragically Wrong

The Obama administration's appalling decision to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a military trial.

By Dahlia Lithwick

READ FULL STORY | More News and Politics

Save NPR!

Save NPR!

But please, put PBS out of its misery.

By Mark Oppenheimer

READ FULL STORY | More Arts

That Didn't Suck

That Didn't Suck

The top of a Southwest Airlines passenger jet popped open at 36,000 feet, but no one was blown out through the hole. Why not?

By Brian Palmer

READ FULL STORY | More Briefing

Shafer: Who Cares About Couric? Anchors and the Evening News No Longer Matter.

Shafer: Who Cares About Couric? Anchors and the Evening News No Longer Matter.

Are These Anti-Bullying Videos Unwittingly Promoting Suicide?

Are These Anti-Bullying Videos Unwittingly Promoting Suicide?

How Oklahoma Republicans Are Using a Sharia Ban To Pummel Democrats

How Oklahoma Republicans Are Using a Sharia Ban To Pummel Democrats

The Prediction Contest That Could Win You $3 Million and Save the U.S. Health Care System

The Prediction Contest That Could Win You $3 Million and Save the U.S. Health Care System

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Help! I Sent a Really, Really, Really Stupid Email by Accident. What Do I Do?

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CBS News Washington Bureau Chief Was an FBI Snitch

By John Cook

CBS News Washington Bureau Chief Was an FBI Snitch

CBS News Washington Bureau Chief Was an FBI SnitchThe Center for Public Integrity is reporting that an unnamed former ABC News journalist was an FBI informant during and after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, passing along tips and revealing a source. We know who it is.

According to an FBI memo obtained by the Center, a nameless ABC News journalist contacted the FBI on the evening of the bombing to pass along information he had heard from a source: That the "bombing was sponsored by the Iraqi Special Services" and that two more attacks in Los Angeles and Houston were imminent.

The Center didn't name the informant, but we've learned he was Christopher Isham, who is now a vice president at CBS News and the network's Washington bureau chief.

Isham's tip was of course not true, and ABC News never reported it. But the FBI found him useful enough to open an informant file on him, and circled back a year later to ask who his or her source was. Astonishingly, Isham gave him up:

Nearly a year later, the network staffer was contacted by the FBI and agreed to divulge ABC's source for the uncorroborated claim: a former CIA officer named Vincent Cannistraro, who was on contract to the network as a consultant, who, in turn, had gotten the information from a Saudi general.

During the 1996 re-interview, the ABC employee was questioned about the "source of questioned information" and "advised that the source was VINCENT CANNISTRARO, former Counter-Terrorism Chief of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)," the memo stated.

That is, needless to say, a strict no-no, assuming Cannistrano provided the information off the record. Cannistraro told the Center he was "surprised that an ABC journalist had contacted the FBI and relayed the information, in part because it had not been corroborated and was just a rumor passing through Saudi circles." In the end, it didn't matter, as Cannistraro had independently gone to the FBI with the same information on the night of the bombing.

The documents don't show any more contacts between the feds and the informant, but they do show that "he or she was still being vetted for suitability as a snitch after providing 'highly accurate and reliable information in the past,'" according to the Center.

ABC News told the Center that the staffer in question no longer works for the network, and multiple knowledgeable sources have told Gawker that Isham is the rat. Isham was at ABC News from 1978 to 2007, meaning he'd been at ABC News for 17 years in 1995—matching the FBI's description of him at the time as "a senior official employed by ABC News for over 15 years." He ran the investigative unit at ABC News, putting him in regular contact with counterterrorism officials. In 1998, according to his CBS News bio, he organized the first network interview with Osama bin Laden. And his relationship with the FBI went beyond the professional: He was "close friends" with former FBI counterterrorism chief John O'Neill, according to this interview Isham gave to Frontline. (O'Neill was killed in the World Trade Center on 9/11.)

Isham, reached by cell phone, declined to comment and referred questions to a CBS News spokeswoman, who said only: "This is a matter for ABC News." Cannistraro did not respond to email and phone messages. UPDATE: Cannistraro returned our call. He has no direct recollection of whom he talked to at ABC News about the Iraq rumor, so he can't confirm it was Isham. "I don't know if it was Chris or not," he says. "When I got the information, I immediately told the FBI. But I was working for ABC News as an independent contractor, so I'm sure I must have passed it on to them after. What I didn't know was that they'd be passing it on the FBI themselves."

It bears noting that it is a reporter's job to talk to sources, and since one-way conversations can get pretty boring and useless, information inevitably gets traded. Indeed, one way any good reporter would check out a tip about Iraqi involvement in Oklahoma City would be to run it by an FBI source. What's more unusual is to submit to an interview one year later, for agents in the middle of a criminal investigation, and to reveal your sources of information. That sort of cooperation is the kind of thing that can get an informant file opened on you.

Here's what CBS News had to say about the Isham affair, before it knew that Isham was involved:

The revelation, taken from a declassified FBI memo, raises questions about journalistic integrity and law enforcement ethics, as journalists are expected to keep confidential sources out of the hands of law enforcement unless there is an imminent danger to lives or the public good, neither of which appears the case.

The Oklahoma City case wasn't the only time Isham ran into the shady territory between covering law enforcement and aiding it. After he produced the bin Laden interview, according to Frontline, his pal O'Neill asked to see the unedited version. Isham demurred, citing ABC News policy against sharing unedited footage with the government. But after O'Neill persisted, Isham got the bright idea to put the whole interview online, elegantly dodging the issue.

"It's something that we often have to fight as journalists," Isham explained to Frontline, "to convince people that we are not connected and not working for a law enforcement organization or an intelligence organization."

[Photo of Oklahoma City via AP. Photo of Isham via CBS]

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The Afternoon Scoop - The States That Sponge the Most Tax Dollars

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The Daily Beast - The Afternoon Scoop - April 5, 2011
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CHEAT SHEET
MUST READS FROM ALL OVER

RANKINGS
1. States That Sponge the Most Tax Dollars

As Democrats and Republicans battle over the budget, The Daily Beast
crunches the numbers to see which states take more from D.C. than they
send back—and which states get shortchanged.

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SHUTDOWN SHOWDOWN
2. Dems to Oppose Budget Stopgap

Frantic negotiations in Washington still haven't yielded a budget deal.
A meeting at the White House provided a good discussion but didn't
result in an agreement, Speaker John Boehner said after the meeting
Tuesday. Meanwhile, House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer (D-MD) says his side
will oppose a continuing resolution, a stopgap measure that would
prevent a shutdown while negotiations continued. Both Republicans and
Democrats have previously said they wouldn't accept another
stopgap—there have been several already—but GOP spending hawks have been
pushing a continuing resolution that would fund the government for a
week and the Pentagon through late September while cutting spending by
$12 billion.

Read it at The Washington Post:
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IVORY COAST
France: Gbagbo Near Surrender
Ceasefire talks under way.
http://e.thedailybeast.com/a/tBNm28OB7SwhTB8aGstNsjV9oyt/cht3

LIBYA
Hague Court: Gaddafi Planned Civilian Killings
ICC could seek warrants in May.
http://e.thedailybeast.com/a/tBNm28OB7SwhTB8aGstNsjV9oyt/cht4

HACKING
Two News of the World Journalists Arrested
For "unlawful interception of voicemail messages."
http://e.thedailybeast.com/a/tBNm28OB7SwhTB8aGstNsjV9oyt/cht5

REPRIEVE
Supreme Court Blocks Execution
Texas would have used controversial new chemicals.
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How to protect critical data on virtual servers

Linux Management: How to Save $20k This Year | Learn How to Optimize Vulnerability Management
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4 Ways to Overcome Storage Usability Challenges | Storage Solutions: How to Optimize Your Oracle Environment
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While the performance advantages of SSD storage are clear, the cost is often prohibitive. But what if you could target the data that really needs the performance edge at the SSD drives? You could balance the cost against IT performance gains that truly help your business perform. In this article, you will learn more about the tools you need to be able to use SSDs appropriately in their distinctive workload environments.
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Hot Skills Developers Need from Microsoft Mix11; AT&T-T-Mobile Deal Would Affect Jobs, Security: FCC's Copps

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TOP STORIES - April 5, 2011
Hot Skills Developers Need from Microsoft Mix11
AT&T-T-Mobile Deal Would Affect Jobs, Security: FCC's Copps
Why Bagging Gosling Is a Huge Coup for Google
Your Boss Is Unprepared and Knows It
Will PAAS Solve All Developer Ills?
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Great Google April Fools' Gags
To celebrate the rich history of Google's jokester ways, we take a look back at some of the search engine's better pranks.
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Hot Skills Developers Need from Microsoft Mix11
Topics at Microsoft's upcoming MIX 2011 conference, also known as MIX11, will run the gamut, from rich Internet applications to Web standards, media, video, cloud services, tooling, devices, games and breakthroughs coming out of research. Developers can also hear about the future of technologies like HTML5 and CSS3, Silverlight, Internet Explorer, Windows Phone, ASP.NET and more.
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AT&T-T-Mobile Deal Would Affect Jobs, Security: FCC's Copps
AT&T's proposed purchase of T-Mobile raises questions about American jobs, security and infrastructure, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps said in a C-SPAN interview.
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Despite the Oracle Android case, Google wins big in hiring James Gosling, the creator of the Java language. Gosling joins an A-list of technology inventors and language designers.
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Your Boss Is Unprepared and Knows It
Too many managers get promoted beyond their abilities and experiences, and training for new roles is often lacking.
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With interest in platform as a service on the rise, what must developers look for to ensure that they are making the right moves and not falling into traps of previous generations of technology?
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